The Captain's Piece
by Spurnine
Summary: What is the Captain's story, after all?


The Captain:

For decades he drifted, disconnected, alone, over all Europe. In London, he passed six or so slim years hunting the man who called himself Jack the Ripper—a fruitless chase that ended in that madman's suicide.

And then, because he could, almost 100 years later and in a country called Germany, he'd chosen a random side in a pointless war. He had not thought, when he joined the German National Socialist Army, had not thought about anything.

He wandered in bombed-out city streets, past shell-wrecked buildings, and felt nothing. Cold snow fell, and sometimes he would stand treelike, monumental, and unmoving, rooted to a single spot for solitary hours at a time, until the snow collected in the folds and crooks of his clothing. His comrades would find him, call out to him, and sometimes think him strange. Others, who understood less, thought him a magnificent prankster for making himself look like a statue, only to start to life again once spoken to.

It was in this emotion-dead apathy, in this condition, that he one day wandered into the offices of a certain Major, with the interest of a transfer to the front lines.

This Major, chubby and in endless good spirits even then, had taken one look at him and politely refused, and suggested, instead, that the Captain transfer to the unit under his jurisdiction.

So the Captain changed units. He met the Major's second-in-command (and, from the way they acted around one another, most likely more), an impossibly thin rail of a man with features sharp enough to pare wood on, and a telltale tattoo on his arm that he hid with overly-long gloves, custom-fitted to his deformed hands.

Then there was the farsighted riflewoman van Winkle, whose first name, he thought, was nothing more than a bad pun on her parents' part.

And the last member of the upper echelon of that bizarre group, a boy of no more than fourteen—sandy-haired, and always underfoot. The strange little black puppy-ears on either side of his head were never mentioned by any of the other members, and so the Captain had decided that it was not prudent to ask, himself. The Major indulged him like a favorite puppy, allowing him to loll all over him with no complaint. That was the first time the Hitler's Youth uniform had actually impressed the Captain as being _sexy_.

But even with this newfound family and all their collective strangeness, the soul-emptiness persisted.

Under the Major, his previous identity was swept away, replaced by a new one. The Major picked out a new name for him, as he himself was too much given to silence and had not considered names a matter of importance, anyway.

The Major had presented him with a pair of plain steel dog-tags, his essential information pared down to the swastika, his rank, and—his new name: Hans Gunsche.

"I hope you don't mind; I had my secretaries…alter your files a bit," the Major had said, so quietly, so discreetly. And then, as gently as though he were making a joke, he added, "Besides, you look much more like a Hans anyway, ja?"

And even after he had gone the Captain was left with a tingling sensation over the backs of his arms, and his neck—the kind of stirring he'd not felt in decades.

Then, much later, there were the nights when the moon was full and swollen in the night sky, when his human form became an itching prison too small for his true one.

Once, when he'd been passing through the common barracks, he'd passed a group of soldiers sitting under an open window and playing cards. One of them had called out to him and even waved him down with a hand whose index and middle finger clutched a cigarette between them, burnt down nearly to the butt. The reek of tobacco and beer had drilled into his hypersensitive sinuses even from that distance of a dozen feet. And then the full moon in the black sky had glared down upon him like a massive accusing eye, and the sudden urge had been too great.

He only vaguely remembered completely demolishing the barracks. He did _not_ remember eviscerating the soldiers, or even transforming in the first place.

He _did_ remember the Major's sudden appearance, his total calm in the wake of such destruction. He remembered the sound of expensive dress shoes treading heedlessly—fearlessly—over broken glass and splintered wood and the twisted remains of the metal table.

There was no rebuke. The Major "tutted" softly at the mess and made no mention whatever if the limbs and organs strewn about.

Instead he stepped closer to the shaking werewolf standing in the midst of all the debris.

He raised his hand and the Captian _flinched_ almost imperceptibly; but instead of a chastising slap or a shot from a hidden sniper, the hand met the side of his face only gently.

The werewolf shuddered once, then laid his mammoth white head in the Major's hand. The small crest of bone beneath his eye fit perfectly into the cupped plump palm, and the eyes, sunken in their black sockets, rolled shut. The Captain looked perfectly penitent.

"You poor creature. You have been utterly alone for so long…" and the Major's face was sympathetic, without being pitying or maudlin. His eyes seemed to have seen and felt and understood everything, every year of emptiness, and completely.

The Captain could not have known then (and nor would he, for almost two more decades) the extent to which the Major _did_ understand. But by that point sympathy, or even the pretense of it, had become the Captain's manna, the only form of sustenance he had.

His loyalty grew like that of a lonely dog for an indulgent master. He became, in one sense, the guard-dog and shepherding-dog of the Major's group. If there were orders from the Major, he would do them unquestioningly, immediately. And when the Major made requests, in his way that made it seem as though he was asking for favors, the Captain would all but contort himself to do those, as well. Any hoop, any trick, the Major asked him to do, and he obeyed, flawlessly, every time—all out of gratefulness. He had found in the Major what he had craved for long centuries of emptiness; everything he did was in return for this.


End file.
